Health Insurance Discussion

[banca rotta]

Iprn sooner or later you and those like you will stop taking people like me out of context.

Of course human life is far more important then money!

If I was the one in charge I would see to it that the failures would fail the hard workers would succeed, jobs would be created, as posted here the American dream which seems to by dying would return and with all the working Americans producing and having AFFORDABLE health plans so we can get the care we need and deserve.

What kind of kaos do you think we are going to have if we don't fix these "money" problems first!!!!????

http://history1900s.about.com/od/photographs/tp/greatdepressionpictures.htm

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/03/scenes_from_the_recession.html

We must focus on fixing these problems first. If not what difference will anything else make?

Also remember Hitler and lowlife scum like him were byproducts of economic colapse. Far more people got sick and died because "money" wasn't an important enough issue back then either.

Good intentions are good for nothing.

[lrprn]

Iprn sooner or later you and those like you will stop taking people like me out of context.

If you can't defend every sentence that you post, then please think twice about what you are posting and how you are stating it.

Of course human life is far more important then money!

I'm glad to hear you say that. It is.

If I was the one in charge I would see to it that the failures would fail....

If I was the one in charge, I would see to it that everyone who wanted to succeed had an equal opportunity to succeed. Currently that doesn't exist in this country, if it ever did.

...jobs would be created...

The billions given over by Congress at the request of both Bush and Obama were to prop up the rapidly crashing economy and to save as many jobs as possible. The job loss rates would be even higher by now without the stimulus.

Both presidents did put the economy first because it impacts the entire country (actually the entire world) and every single American citizen directly. Now it's time to fix healthcare, because it's a major driver of why full economic recovery may be a long time coming, even be impossible for many Americans.

...the American dream which seems to by dying...

Ask yourself why it's dying. You have to personally and deeply question simplistic talking points by the extreme right and left of both political parties, conservatives, libertarians, and progressives.

Our American dream is dying primarily because the majority of American people on all levels and classes sold their souls to money and acquiring 'stuff' they didn't really need to artifically prop up a hyper-capitalistic anomaly of an economy so company shareholders would get their regularly increasing profits. Sure was fun for a lot of very rich folks who got even more obscenely richer. Only problem was that when too many spiraled out of control with unrestrained and selfish greed they over-reached, crashed the country's economy, and dragged the middle and lower classes down with them.

...with all the working Americans producing and having AFFORDABLE health plans so we can get the care we need and deserve.

We are both in 100% agreement about this. Nice to find some common ground between us.

What kind of kaos do you think we are going to have if we don't fix these "money" problems first!!!!????

Our congress has artifically propped up our economy with two stimulus boosts of billions of dollars over the last year. It's the primary reason we are slowly, slowly recovering.

Now it's time to turn to fixing healthcare, because if we don't reform it now, healthcare spending alone will be the reason thousands of jobs will be lost. "Without health care reform, small businesses will pay nearly $2.4 trillion dollars over the next ten years in health care costs for their workers, 178,000 small business jobs will be lost by 2018 as a result of health care costs, $834 billion in small business wages will be lost due to high health care costs over the next ten years, small businesses will lose $52.1 billion in profits to high health care costs and 1.6 million small business workers will suffer “job lock“— roughly one in 16 people currently insured by their employers." (http://www.nchc.org/facts/cost.shtml)

This is a economic catastrophe that will affect millions of citizens. This is why healthcare reform needs to happen now, not later.

Also remember Hitler and lowlife scum like him were byproducts of economic colapse. Far more people got sick and died because "money" wasn't an important enough issue back then either.

Our American society, our current struggling economy, and our politicians today are nothing like the Third Reich. We don't match up at all with Germany's financial and cultural state in the early 1930s. Read up on your history before starting to throw around dire Hitler statements. 'Hitler' and 'Nazis' are a prop used by both extreme political sides when legitimate defenses for a belief have run out of gas. You can do better.

Good intentions are good for nothing.

To achieve a goal, one must first think through how to achieve that goal. If thinking is all that's accomplished and no actions follow, then you're right - those intentions were a complete waste of time and energy.

However, just as bad are knee-jerk actions done without understanding first what the short- and long-term consequences of those actions or non-actions may be.

I believe our Congress understands that something has to change in healthcare, but due to the tight embrace of rigid and inflexible ideologies by some on both sides, intense fear of not being re-elected by others, and because far too many have become a tool of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries through their lobbying machine and high dollar contributions to re-election campaigns, a large portion of our Congressional representatives are now unwilling to participate in getting the healthcare reform job done.

This isn't a case of good intentions failing to produce results. This is a significant number of representatives and senators placing themselves above the people they represent. They have chosen to ignore the majority of their constituents' desire to improve every American citizen's life by improving their healthcare now. And I hope that we, the American voters, vote every single one of those unwilling to participate in this reform effort out of office on the next election cycles for non-performance of the job we elected them to do.

[Pizza]

NO Obamacare!

If provided as an extension of Medicare (which is rapidly failing), any government sponsored healthcare program would likely be tied to the poverty line, which is so low that in order to qualify for Medicare, you're probably feeding your kids cheese and crackers and living with your relatives.

The runaway inflation has not been considered in the poverty line, either. Take someone who went from making $60,000 a year before the recession and having company-sponsored health insurance who was laid off and now was "lucky" enough to find a job earning $30,000 a year (before taxes), roughly double to triple the poverty level. Add in the cost of daycare, gas and parking (if applicable) just to get to work, then housing, utilities, food, etc. and then they're having to debate between basic needs and health insurance.

A government manadate should include government assistance, and I mean REAL assistance, not just for lazy welfare moms and illegal immigrants, but for people trying and failing to keep up with the basic costs of living. This would be very costly and add at least billions, probably trillions more to our deficits, furthering inflation to the point that the cost of the efforts cancel out their benefits.

The only way I could ever support a fine for not obtaining insurance would be if it were subsidized in a way that everyone can afford to do so, with the exception of illegal immigrants... they shouldn't qualify and when hit with the fines would probably go back to where they came from. I don't see how this can be done. Rewind ten years or more and maybe it could have been. I think at this point we're screwed.

[lrprn]

Nice job repeating the standard extremist talking points, Pizza.

Now instead of just repeating what hasn't been proven but is being loudly shouted at every opportunity to scare and confuse people, how about actually reading the current Finance Committee Senate bill at http://help.senate.gov/BAI09A84_xml.pdf and the current House healthcare reform bill at http://docs.house.gov/edlabor/AAHCA-BillText-071409.pdf for yourself?

Then come back and tell me where it says any of what you just posted about illegal immigrants being covered, etc. in either of them. You aren't going to find any of it because it doesn't exist.

This is yet one more example of escalating fearful, "just say no" exaggerations and lies with the hidden purpose of stopping true healthcare reform which will significantly cut into insurance and pharma profits. Why do you think so much money is being spent by their lobbies to stop healthcare reform?

It's sad that so many millions of Americans seem to have lost the ability to seek out the facts for themselves and make independent decisions for ourselves using those facts. Instead we've grown overly dependent on biased, well-funded news and other sources to do the hard work of a true democracy for us. We react emotionally to a message designed specifically to evoke emotional reactions so we won't start looking in an objective way at the facts.

Now it's all about the message 'spin' to fan the rhetoric flames ever higher and about "winning" at all costs no matter how many people are hurt along the way.

It appears that due to the polarization and splintering encouraged/demanded by many factions in this country, we may have lost the ability to solve hard problems facing our country. Definitely not what our Founding Fathers had in mind.

[nc73]

I thought even once the healthcare bill passes (well if it passes) it will be another 3 years before it goes into affect. How will this help with the economy NOW?? It will be all over after 3 years.

[Pizza]

Are we a little cranky, lrprn?

I'm not repeating anything, at least not intentionally. This has been my stance since the beginning. We can't get around these deficits without giving our nation's creditor countries a nuclear submarine world tour.. (nuclear bankruptcy?) We have all been rattled by inflation over the past few years, and if the dollar keeps losing its value, we will never be able to overcome it. Every time we try to solve problems by printing money we are adding to future chaos.

The cost of health care has risen to these astronomical levels because of efforts by medical school graduates in the early 1900s to stomp out their competition, combined with technological advances that are funded by expensive research. We should have tackled this problem decades ago; we may simply be too late.

Do you think I would not want affordable healthcare for everyone if it were economically feasible? Of course I do! The problem is that we are in the middle of problems we have never seen before and we would most certainly compound the problem by adding more deficits to our plate.

The time to fix this problem is around 1970. Today, we just can't afford to do nothing and we can't afford to do something. We have just let this issue go unchecked until it has become an unstoppable monster. We ALMOST could have done this last year had we let the banks/automakers flop and tackled health care reform instead. Instead, we likely wasted our final opportunity.

Tackling healthcare today is like grabbing a fire extinguisher after the house has burned down. We could build another house in its place had we not have blown everything we had. I am sorry you were offended by my post, but this is how I feel about the issue and I simply don't think there is a viable solution.

As for the illegal immigrants, they may not be in the bill, but I can tell you from my experience with hospitals in Texas, they abuse the healthcare system and we all pay for it dearly. There is not a hospital in my city that will turn down someone who is sick, illegal or not. Who foots those bills? Taxpayers, of course. Not only in the form of higher costs but higher property taxes to fund the county hospitals. Likewise, a legal citizen could go to the hospital and if they couldn't afford the bill, they would end up here on this website looking into bankruptcy. Is that fair?

[Pizza]

In regard to those links, they total 1,600 pages. If you actually had the time to read all of that, please explain their plan to recoup the costs of the programs. I skimmed through half of the second link and took in some of the general idea, which is a description of the fix, but not the means to pay for it.

If there were a fix that would not result in inflation, poverty, and/or war it would be justified. I just don't see how we could achieve this, and PDFs of legal mumbo jumbo aren't likely to address the issues I'm concerned the most about, but you're welcome to show me if you have found such in all of that.

[justbroke]

In regard to those links, they total 1,600 pages. If you actually had the time to read all of that, please explain their plan to recoup the costs of the programs.

Other than Sen Baucus' committee, I don't know if anyone read the whole thing. Your frustration is noted!

I think the problem is... there is a problem. The other problem is... without a master-reset, there's no way of fixing the root-cause of the problem. No one wants to do the master-reset (single payer system), so... we want reform instead of a revamp. I'm all for a revamp! However, what they're doing in the Congress... is not a revamp. Yes, they say that they're revamping the system, but they are not. They are just patching a sinking ship, in my personal opinion.

I want to see real change. I am actually not mad at the insurance companies. They are a middle man and make a profit on a system which makes its money at the provider layer... not the insurance layer! Unless until we change the provider system... I don't see must of a revamp at all.

I personally, without date, without reading the 1,600 page document, having limited experience in both the insurance layer or provider layers, and just thinking out loud... I only believe the current reforms will get us to trim a very little of the problem (slow it down), rather than actually fix it. Until the cost of attending medical school at Harvard is less than $100K... this just isn't going to fix the provider layer, which is where the problem is.

It's not the insurance layer!!! Insurance only provides coverage. It doesn't actually cure people, does nothing, and only acts as a payer.

[Pizza]

Until the cost of attending medical school at Harvard is less than $100K... this just isn't going to fix the provider layer, which is where the problem is.

That's something else I have stressed many times (not here), that it is obvious that the medical industry is the only industry that practically guarantees jobs to college graduates, but as you said, most people just can't afford it.

It is a well known fact that the cost of tuition grows faster than any other inflation element in the country, even health care. This is also problematic for health care reform because if the government went the education route to provide, for example, your $100K Harvard education to potential medical students, we would still have an inflation/deficit problem.

That being said, it would be wonderful to have the market flooded with doctors, bringing down the cost of care and causing more wealth distribution as medical graduates spend heavily until their salaries drop with competition. This would ramp up growth in every sector of our economy. Though inflation would be present here as well, it is still a better option than a direct attack on private insurance companies in the long run.

[justbroke]

Though inflation would be present here as well, it is still a better option than a direct attack on private insurance companies in the long run.

You're preaching to the choir!

[Pizza]

Actually, I was preaching to everybody that cares to read. I already knew you were in the choir.

[justbroke]

The collective we, Congress, is so busy trying to fix "healthcare" and health insurance, that they forgot that providing healthcare itself, is the bottom line. (And I don't mean "coverage for all", I mean a healthcare system that works for all. There's a difference between just coverage and working.)

Again, for me, this is a patch. I think the current administration is smart about positioning it now, after much rhetoric, as a step forward, but not the "cure" for the entire system. It's has gone from we must do this now, to this is the building block for the future. I don't believe it is without a complete overhaul from how we deliver care (private versus public hospitals/care facilities), to how we educate our doctors and nurses (Ivy League schools versus State schools versus tuition).

This bill, which I read parts of... spends so much time attacking insurance companies, that it seems to forget where the costs come from. The first part of the senate bill immediately goes after insurance companies. Can you say easy target? (By the way, you know how you win elections? Tell the (voting) people what the problem is... then tell them who is to blame for it! Yep... it's the insurance companies that are making things so expensive, if you are reading the general pulse of the people.)

I wouldn't expect any person who spent $450,000 on an 8-year education at Harvard, to get a $60K a year job. An interesting article in the Boston Globe last year said that only 44% of Harvard's graduating doctors chose primary care. The rest, of course, chose specialties like cardiology (where you can earn $400K a year!). That's down from 57% in 1999. So, you see why the doctors are heading to the specialties.

It is that curve you have to tame.

Come on... Congress' name for it is "America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009"? Are you kidding me? I thought it was about "HEALTH CARE" not "Health Choices".

Let's just call the current bill what it is... the Healthcare Omnibus Approriations eXtension of 2009. (Pun intended.) Why, because I bet it gets piggybacked with some pork.

(I mean no dis-respect to the honest congressman or congresswoman trying to do the right thing.)

[lrprn]

Are we a little cranky, lrprn?

Yes, obviously I am very cranky about this issue. Very observant of you.

I'm tired of having a first row, front-and-center seat to watch sick, deserving American citizens have to choose between buying medicine or pay their mortgage, rent, or car payment.

I'm tired of watching spouses and parents desperately search for ways to afford the care their ill relative or child needs to survive.

I'm tired of watching families end up in bankruptcy because they have tapped out everything they have and more trying to pay enormous medical bills.

I'm tired of watching husbands, wives, and parents deliberately sacrifice their family's financial future by mortgaging their homes and other assets to the hilt to pay for an operation or expensive treatment to save their sick child or spouse now.

I'm tired of watching all the other first-world countries in the world provide basic healthcare for all their citizens and pay much less to do it and get better results than we do.

I could go on and on. Yes, I'm very cranky. Come spend some time in my shoes and watch the human wreckage accumulate right in front of you day after day - you'd be very cranky too.

I've said my piece several times on this thread. No sense repeating myself over and over. I needed to make a personal stand on this issue because I live embedded in it up to my ears every day and have for over 30 years. I understand how important it is to change it, and that the change has been far too long coming. If we don't get healthcare reform now, then the human cost is going to be enormous, but just as well-hidden and glossed over as it has been for the last decade or more.

It's far too easy to take a ideological stand when you don't personally have to see the bloodshot "whites of their eyes", when you don't have to watch a spouse or parent emotionally devastated because their loved one or child is suffering or dying only because they don't have enough money to pay for an operation or an expensive medicine. I pray you never have to see those faces firsthand, ever, because it tears at your soul in ways you will never truly understand until you are forced to experience it yourself. That was what I was trying to do - give a glimpse of the other side of the real healthcare human curtain. It's easier not to see it, I know. But it's there in all its pain and unfairness whether it's acknowledged or not.

Watching people suffer and die only because they don't have enough money on hand to pay for basic healthcare is a permanent stain on the fabric of our American society that we may never be able to wash out.

We should have tackled this problem decades ago; we may simply be too late.

On this I am sad to the depths of my soul to say we are in agreement.

Over and out.

[Pizza]

I understand why you're upset. Everyone is upset about this problem. What I don't get is why we wait until we reach a full-scale crisis mode to solve our problems. As bad of a president as Bush was, he did nothing worse than all the other presidents before him when it came to healthcare.

We have had a horrible economy this entire decade. Since the economy was so healthy and thriving during the mid-90s, why didn't Clinton get off his lazy butt and do something then? For that matter, why has every president preceeding Obama swept this problem under the rug?

Our economy is dying here and we're tackling healthcare at this moment why?! We will soon be worse off than the UK in terms of taxes and inflation, I guarantee it.

[nc73]

Actually the UK taxes isn't that bad especially with the current US economy. With people not having to worry about healthcare here, it's not bad at all.